Automated control systems for industrial processes such as the production of steel, petrochemicals, and synthetic fibers, among others, are operative in response to information representative of the current state of the industrial process to actuate preselected process controllers for maintaining the process within prescribed boundaries, and for providing out-of-bounds indications, among others. The heretofore known central control systems employed for this purpose having a special or general purpose computer connected to multiple input signal wires carrying information representative of sensed, plant floor conditions, and multiple output signal wires for actuating plant floor controllers and alarms are disadvantageous, among other reasons, due to the large expenditure of capital and manpower required during installation, the long delays in system aquisition often occasioned by lengthly management approval procedures, and the long and costly plant shut-downs typically occasioned by system malfunction. The heretofore known distributed measurement and control systems employed for this purpose having a remotely-positioned master, control processor that repetitively polls and commands a plurality of addressable, slave devices positioned about the plant floor and interconnected over a coaxial cable link are disadvantageous, among other reasons, due to the memory overhead and processing burdens placed on the master, control processor preventing it from attending other tasks, the slower than desireable control response times resulting from repetitive interrogation, computation, and command signal generation, and the high wiring, installation, and service costs involved.